Three hundred and fifty odd kilometers from the fanfare of Flemington, a country track in Coleraine seemed an unlikely venue for a trainer of Tom Dabernig’s stature to gain his first winner since taking out a trainer’s licence in his own right.
But that is exactly where Dabernig sent the five-year-old mare Lunatic Fringe to for her first hit-out for the stable since following Dabernig out of the Hayes yard.
The three-and-a-half hour drive from Dabernig’s new home base at Warrnambool would have seemed shorter on the return trip after Lunatic Fringe demolished her opposition to the tune of nine lengths over the 2250m trip in a BM58 Handicap with John Allen a passenger in the saddle … and that, according to the jockey, was on a track that wasn’t really to her liking.
“She’s a big mare and this track that continually turned didn’t suit her, but she was always travelling easily,” Allen told Racing.com. “I let her roll up to the lead and she put them to bed pretty quickly.”
Lunatic Fringe, who started a $2.25 Sportsbet favourite was the second starter for Dabernig. Bellx had previous finished fourth on the synthetic track at Ballarat on July 20.
Dabernig’s fairly recent decision to take out an independent training license came as a surprise to some as he had spent twenty-five years working for the Hayes family’s Lindsay Park establishment … during which time he helped saddle nineteen Group 1 winners when in an official training partnership, firstly with David and then with Ben Hayes when David moved to Hong Kong … but Dabernig felt that the time was right to make the move.
Establishing your own stable, amongst other things is a time consuming task and currently Dabernig is both literally and figuratively in the process of building his business.
Dabernig currently has fifteen boxes at Warrnambool and is in the process of having more stables built which he hopes will ultimately allow him to train a team of around forty horses.
